Tom Cruise spent four decades as the one movie star regular Americans still trusted with their ticket money.
Then Hollywood handed him a pile of prosthetics and a script that treats the oil business like a crime scene.
And the number that came back from theaters has Warner Bros staring into one of the ugliest holes in studio history.
The Opening Weekend Warner Bros Never Planned For
Digger opened in more than 3,300 North American theaters. Audiences handed it about $8 million.
TheWrap pegged the take even lower, at $7.5 million.
Warner Bros had told the trade press to expect $12 million to $15 million. Box Office Pro’s early forecast ran as high as $30 million. The movie missed both by a mile.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose company sets off an ecological disaster that threatens the whole planet. Director Alejandro G Iñárritu buried his star under prosthetics and sold the thing as an apocalyptic satire.
The Hollywood Reporter put the production budget at $125 million. Variety reported the cost climbed as high as $180 million after the shoot ran long. And Forbes reported Warner Bros spent another $100 million on marketing.
Deadline noted Cruise hasn’t opened this low since Lions for Lambs, a war drama, took in $6.7 million back in 2007.
Breitbart’s John Nolte added up the bill and called the movie “not only a confirmed flop, but a historical flop.”
Even the People Who Bought Tickets Walked Out Sour
CinemaScore polls moviegoers on their way out of the theater. Digger got a C+.
Deadline reported only 47% of ticket buyers said they would definitely recommend it. Rotten Tomatoes showed barely half of critics approving, which is saying something for an industry that usually grades its own sermons on a curve.
One critic saw it coming. Edward Douglas of The Weekend Warrior Show wrote after an early press screening, “I expect a HORRENDOUS CinemaScore.”
But here’s the part that stings for the studio. Anne Hathaway’s thriller Verity opened against Digger and pulled in about $33 million. Americans still drive to the theater and still buy popcorn. They just didn’t buy this.
Iñárritu said he made the movie for Gen Z, according to Deadline. Think about that for a second. Warner Bros took the man from Top Gun, whose most loyal fans have grandkids, and aimed him at an audience that watches everything on a phone. Deadline’s numbers showed 73% of the crowd was male and most were under 35, and there weren’t many of them.
Cruise posted behind-the-scenes photos and told followers he’s proud of what the cast and crew made, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Nobody should knock a man for standing by his crew.
And yet pride doesn’t fill seats. Nolte projected the domestic run will die before it reaches $20 million, which he figures would leave Warner Bros with losses in the $150 million range. That’s one columnist’s math, and the final tally could land elsewhere, but nobody in the trades is predicting a comeback.
Hollywood Keeps Bankrolling Sermons Nobody Ordered
The entertainment business has blown up money before. Disney took a write-down of roughly $200 million on John Carter. Deadline estimated The Marvels cost that same studio about $237 million.
Those were at least trying to be crowd-pleasers. Digger is a different animal. Out-of-touch Hollywood elites looked at the industry that heats American homes, fills American gas tanks, and runs the air conditioning in every multiplex in the country, and decided the oilman had to be the villain who ends the world.
It was another Hollywood sermon about why America needed to adopt the Marxist Green New Deal.
Working families have heard this lecture for decades. Doomsday climate forecasts keep blowing past their own deadlines, and the answer from the Left never changes: higher taxes, more regulation, and less American energy. Communist China and India keep right on building and burning while Democrats ask American workers to pay the tab.
So a quarter-billion-dollar movie telling those same families that oil will kill everybody was always going to be a tough sell. Maybe that sounds too simple. Critics split on the film for plenty of reasons, the makeup among them, and a bad trailer can sink anything. But the message sat right there in the plot summary, and the audience that made Cruise rich stayed home.
Nolte put it bluntly: “Lunacy and hate are not a profitable business plan.”
The timing couldn’t be worse for the studio. Deadline reported Warner Bros film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are leaving after new owner Paramount rejected their contracts. TheWrap described Digger as the last release before Paramount takes over the 103-year-old studio. Quite a going-away present.
And don’t expect any soul-searching. Nolte pointed out that online film fans already started a “reassessment” of the movie before its first weekend even ended. TheWrap floated the idea of cult status down the road.
Next comes the awards campaign. Warner Bros positioned Digger as an Oscar play, and Hollywood loves nothing more than handing trophies to a movie regular people refused to watch. If the nominations roll in, the same crowd will explain that ticket buyers in flyover country just weren’t smart enough to get it.
But the receipts already told the story. The country’s last dependable movie star put on a rubber face to scold the oil patch, and about $8 million worth of customers showed up to hear it.
Sources:
Breitbart News, John Nolte, “Tom Cruise’s Climate Screed ‘Digger’ Opens to $8M, Deadly C+ Cinemascore”
Deadline, weekend box office report on Verity and Digger
The Hollywood Reporter, “Tom Cruise Stands Up for ‘Digger’ Amid Tough Box Office” and “‘Digger’: Tom Cruise’s ‘Brave Gorgeous Misfire’ Gets Very Mixed First Reactions”
TheWrap, “‘Verity’ Leads Box Office With $33 Million Opening While ‘Digger’ Sinks to $7.5 Million”
Forbes, Tim Lammers, “‘Digger’: Tom Cruise Film Eyes Dismal $8 Million Opening Weekend At Box Office”